A note on the Amazon ads: I've chosen to display current events titles in the Amazon box. Unfortunately, Amazon appears to promote a disproportionate number of angry-left books. I have no power over it at this time. Rest assured, I'm still a conservative.

Saturday, February 12, 2005

Eason Jordan is gone: Apparently he got a job offer at al Jazeera. (Not really.) CNN's top news executive had accused the American military, at a forum in Davos, Switzerland, of deliberately targeting journalists in Iraq.

A few thoughts:

I'm surprised that Jordan has resigned. I believed that if Jordan's admitted sell out to Saddam Hussein (Jordan confessed to hiding Saddam's atrocities in order to keep a bureau open in Baghdad) -- sacrificing the truth for access -- wasn't enough to bury his journalism credentials, then this wouldn't be either.

We still need to press for the Davos videotape to be released. Why? Well, today's New York Times report is example A:

Though no transcript of Mr. Jordan's remarks at Davos on Jan. 27 has been released, the panel's moderator, David Gergen, editor at large of U.S. News & World Report, said in an interview last night that Mr. Jordan had initially spoken of soldiers, "on both sides," who he believed had been "targeting" some of the more than four dozen journalists killed in Iraq.

Almost immediately after making that assertion, Mr. Jordan, whose title at CNN had been executive vice president and chief news executive, "quickly walked that back to make it clear that there was no policy on the part of the U.S. government to target or injure journalists," Mr. Gergen said.

Mr. Jordan was then challenged by Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, who was in the audience. Mr. Jordan then said that he had intended to say only that some journalists had been killed by American troops who did not know they were aiming their weapons at journalists. [emphasis added]

Jordan can continue to play the victim card and get sympathetic press in the mainstream media until there is no doubt about what was said in that forum at Davos.

This renews my faith in the power of Hillary Clinton's vast right-wing conspiracy. The story moved from blogs, to talk radio, to right-leaning newspapers and finally started to trickle into the mainstream media when Jordan called it quits.

As the Jordan story ran in parallel with the liberal blogosphere's crusade against White House reporter "Jeff Gannon" and Talon News, it was curious to see how one of the media's "bibles" treated the two stories. In the past two weeks, Editor & Publisher ran five stories on "Gannon". (1, 2, 3, 4, 5). Compare that with not a single story on the Eason Jordan statement.

And you've mentioned Gannon but once, rerunning quotes of his full of unattributed, insinuated excuses "at least I'm not the 60 Minutes producer with the Kerry campaign on speed dial." No, Mr. Guckert, you're the ex-fake journalist with a fake name who quotes fake Rushisms as if they're facts in press conferences. Helen Thomas never did that because she knows what journalism is about.

As for Media Matters? Gannon/Guckert/Talon/GOPUSA isn't their only example of a conservative bias in some of the media. They have lots of examples - you should check it out sometime.

So she's actually wishing harm on journalists? Other than the NYTimes, that is, as she has done in the past when she said that she wished Timothy McVeigh had gone to the Times buiilding. Nice. In my book this makes her much worse than Eason Jordan, who at least had the guts to resign after saying something so stupid. Not her -- no guts in that one.